Youth Unleashing Power – a pozitive youth symposium #YUP2016

(Victoria, BC – June 2, 2016) Welcome! The Vancouver Island Persons Living with HIV/AIDS Society (VPWAS) welcomes HIV Positive Youth from across Canada to the first symposium created by and for pozitive Canadian youth.
Youth aged 16-30, living with HIV/AIDS and/or Hepatitis C, will be gathering for Youth Unleashing Power – a pozitive youth symposium #YUP2016 from June 3-5 2016 on the campus of the University of Victoria, on the homelands of the Lekwungen People.
This 3-day sympo

One year after diagnosis, Peterborough’s Rob Olver is diving in to leadership training options and says “Hey Gang! Reinvent your AIDS Service Organization! Here’s how!”

What have I been up to? It’s been an exciting couple of weeks for me. I’d no sooner got back from PLDI training in Orillia, Ontario and then I was off to Ottawa for level two of my TTOA training. I’ve been back from Ottawa about a week now but keeping a low profile while dealing with things on the home and health fronts.
What are PLDI and TTOA? OK, one at a time.
PLDI is the Positive Leadership Development Institute, a partnership program of the Ontario AIDS Network and the Pacifi

Join poz peer research assistants talking about what’s on their minds about GIPA (Greater Involvement of People Living with HIV)

A message from Canadian Positive People Network (CPPN)/ Réseau Canadien des Personnes Seropositives (RCPS) an independent network for and by people living with HIV and HIV co-infections in Canada:
CPPN/RCPS: CPPN / RCPS would like you to join the next Ontario HIV Treatment Network (OHTN) What's Hot with Peer Research Associates Webinar! We hope you can join us and engage in an important conversation about how we can move GIPA/MIPA forward.
Thank you to James Watson of OHTN for coordinatin

TORONTO – Ontario recently witnessed the official birth of a new advocacy and social network for and by people living with HIV/AIDS after an inaugural caucus in May 2015 that attracted a significant number of people living with HIV from across the province.
The Ontario Positive Asians (OPA+) Network is a collective of self-identifying Asians living in Ontario who represent ethno-racial connections to East, South-East, West, and South Asian countries, as well as the diasporic communities o

Michael Yoder on the Denver Principles and how people living with HIV are doing in relation to GIPA/MIPA and their “nothing about us without us” sentiments.

“Do you know where you’re going to? Do you like the things that life is showing you?”
Diana Ross
The UNAiDS Paris Declaration on HIV/AIDS was agreed upon 20 years ago. Prior to that, the Denver Principles spoke about the need for greater inclusion and involvement of people living with HIV in all aspects that affect our lives. These principles were intended as a guide and foundation for inclusion and were the basis for the Greater Involvement of People with HIV/AIDS (GIPA), and subseq

Have the benefits of an undetectable viral load been realized or are those who are undetectable still labouring under the burden of being seen as being as infectious as ever. And what’s the potential of that message for causing harm? Bob Leahy reports

The HIV landscape is ever changing. Rooted in tragedy, the plot twist introduced in 1996 with the advent of antiretroviral therapy is still playing out, with fresh twists coming thick and fast. The future is uncertain but targeting the end of the epidemic has never been more focussed
It’s like a huge three-part drama, with HIV prevention in all its forms - once there was just one - taking.centre stage.
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Prologue
The plot has never been quite this complicated. At one time, prevent

Mark S. King on how the Denver Principles changed HIV/AIDS — and healthcare — forever. Plus a nod to the work of PositiveLite.com’s own David Phillips.

You must know this, because it matters. Because it has already changed your life, no matter who you are, and you may not even realize it. Because as we search for a new national voice for people living with HIV (since the ugly demise of The National Association of People with AIDS), and as LGBT community leaders pledge to re-commit themselves to HIV issues, the voice of people with HIV matters more than ever.
That isn’t about a vague concept. It began at a very real meeting, which gave bi

Worth crowing about – or cringe-worthy? On the eve of the much awaited International AIDS Conference in Washington, Bob Leahy files a personal report card on the state of our response to HIV in Canada in 2012.

Since the last International AIDS Conference in Vienna in 2010, the landscape has changed significantly. Two years ago, for instance, HPTN 052 was not even in our collective vocabulary. Now it’s ubiquitous, and the issues it raised – the promise of a 96% reduction in transmission rates for those on treatment (although it’s not quite that simple) are a principal focus of AIDS 2012, as they should be. But where is Canada on this and other recent advances – and are we slipping from ou

Poz prevention worker Megan DePutter on World AIDS Day: “I feel the urge to pause and reflect and say - to those who have worked for a better future for us all, to those who have died and to those living with HIV - thank you.”

This disease will be the end of many of us, but not nearly all, and the dead will be commemorated and will struggle on with the living, and we are not going away. We won’t die secret deaths anymore. The word only spins forward. We will be citizens. The time has come.
— Tony Kushner, Angels in America, Part Two: Perestroika (1992)
I was born in 1981, the year the first case of AIDS (then identified as GRID) was documented. Growing up during the AIDS pandemic meant that I was not immune fr

Pacific AIDS Network and the Ontario AIDS Network team up to develop leadership skills in HIVers; the results are in and it’s working

Some take on leadership by choice, others by accident.
Says Wayne Bristow, PositiveLIte.com writer from Guelph, Ontario “the first time I thought about learning more about HIV and myself was in 2006. I took the Positive Leadership Level One course. I was about to lose my job of 27 years and I thought the course could help motivate me to move forward with my future. It was during the course that I learned it was designed to find the leader in me. What I gained from it was the knowledge and co